Junior School Newsletter - October 5 2018

JUNIORÂ SCHOOL

NEWSLETTER Friday 5th October 2018 Dear Parents This week has been our annual Quaker Week, the theme for which has been Room for More.

During Meeting for Worship on Monday we thought about how we might interpret this. Some of us thought about having room for more people in our games, while others thought about it terms of charity; room to give more away. Alongside this we explored how there are characteristics that we might have room for more of, such as compassion, understanding, patience, happiness, courtesy, thoughtfulness, consideration and awareness of others. The theme has been woven through much of the work we have done this week as you will see below.

There was perhaps no better way to begin a Quaker Week with a theme so intrinsically linked to thinking of others than counting up the money raised during last Friday’s Apple Day. The stalls were fabulous and the children running them extremely well organised. I’m only disappointed that the PE department have been doing such a good job as the accuracy of the sponges thrown at me was of a high standard! All the fun led to some impressive funds with a staggering £428.62 raised. School Council have decided that this money will be shared equally between: • Action Aid – An international charity which works with women and girls living in poverty. It is currently providing aid to those affected by the recent tsunami and earthquake in Indonesia.

• The Marine Conservation Society – A marine charity, working to ensure our seas are healthy, pollution free and protected.

• One other charity to be decided.

Elsewhere this week we have also seen some other examples of thinking of others, most notably in Hanne-Lydia. She prepared and presented a wonderful assembly to Key Stage 2 about a cheetah and leopard sanctuary she spent time at and wants to support.

Today has been an equally busy day as we have hosted our first Whole School Open Morning of the year. Many thanks to Penelope for her excellent speech to our guests. They will have seen some of the Year 6s in action on the newly opened climbing wall as the first Junior School classes have begun to “get to grips” with it. It’s proving popular and has quickly taken a “hold” and no-one has yet given it the cold “boulder.” They’ve all “harnessed” their inner strength and after their first session are “knot” too bad. (I tried desperately to get karabiner in, but to no avail!)

And while some of the Year 6s were climbing another load were taking part in the Warwick Rugby Festival – they should be back soon and I look forward to hearing how they got on.

The children in Foundation this week have been dressing up as mermaids and divers as part of their work around "The Singing Mermaid." They had lots of fun pretending to swim on the carpet and thought the flippers were very funny. The children also enjoyed listening to some songs from "The Little Mermaid" and now Helen Hoy has "Under the Sea" stuck in her head

once again. The children also played with the instruments and enjoyed creating a band just like in the film.

The Reception children are continuing to do really well with their letter sounds and are beginning to spell words without support using their "Fred Fingers". Helen Hoy will say a word and the children have to say how many different sounds they hear before they identify those corresponding letters. It is all practice, practice, practice at this point. The Nursery children are still identifying different sounds as well as practising to recognise their names.

Having made posters for Apple Day to sell their fabulous Apple Cookies, Year 1 and 2 continued to focus on how non-fiction books are different from fiction. They looked at how they can tell just by looking at the title but then started to think about how they can be used to find out more information about something. Particularly linking with the Quaker week quote ‘Room for more…’ and in this case, room for more wondering and asking questions.

In their maths they focused on using number facts and some children were quite quick at spotting how dominoes can be used to find doubles, writing matching number sentences too.

Following on from their map skills last week, they ventured out into the grounds once again to make ‘Journey Strings’, picking up different objects to remind them of their route and attaching it to a string in order, just in case anyone else might want to take the same journey. In their science, Becca Edwards asked them to think of three things that they might need to survive in their rocket to the moon for two weeks. Some children sensibly suggested a bed, a cosy jumper but eventually they started to understand that we need air, water and food to stay alive. This will hopefully stand them in good stead when someone comes to visit them next week…

This week, Year 3 have dedicated their maths lesson to chocolate, in true Quaker style! (Thankfully, this was clarified for us all in celebration meeting, and Year 3 explained how Quakers came to create such successful chocolate companies.) Pupils have been weighing, measuring and settling on a fixed price for their chocolate bars. They have also been looking at the coins that they would use to pay for their chocolate treats and even roll-playing owning a chocolate shop.

Continuing with the Quaker theme, Year 3 learnt about how George Fox came to found Quakerism, and have also been picking their favourite Quaker advices and Queries.

On a slightly less peaceful note, Year 3 have been learning a digestive system by making one themselves!

First, they mushed up some biscuits and banana together in a bag, along with some water to represent saliva. Once the food was all in a fine paste, pupils pretended that the mixture travelled down the oesophagus and into the stomach. They then added some acidic vinegar to represent stomach acid; this broke the food down even more to harness as much nutrients from the food as possible. The next bit was rather messy, as year three pushed the food mixture through a pair of tights to represent the small intestine. Their hands became sticky, as the ‘intestine’ absorbed nutrients from the food.

In history, pupils have been trying to get their heads around the enormous task that building the pyramids would have been! Did you know that not only are some pyramids taller than 2 big bens and longer than 2 football pitches, but each of the sides face exactly north east south and west? This is even more astonishing when you thing that the Ancient Egyptians would not have had compasses, so they probably achieved this by looking at the stars. Pupils even went to the field to measure the length of a side of The Great Pyramid of Giza (230.34m). They could barely even see the starting point after having measured the length!

This week (Quaker Week) children in Year 4 spent time looking at the Toleration Act 1689 which had a profound impact on the way Quakers could worship. Children were challenged to create their very own version of the “Toleration Act”. We hope you like our version: • Respect others by being kind, helpful and honest.

• Never judge a book by its cover - just because someone is different from you, don’t judge them.

• If your enemy is lost help him find his way back home.

• Understand that we are all rich in different ways.

• Be tolerant of others, especially when lining up for lunch.

• Always be positive to other people.

• Say kind words about other religions.

• Remember, if everybody was the same, the world would be boring.

• If someone is struggling with something help them.

• Don’t patronise people on purpose.

• If someone wants to play with you don’t say no.

• Respond to people in a polite way.

• Don’t be mean to other people just because their opinions are different to yours.

• Listen to people and understand that we are all different.

• Always do your best to help others.

• Even if we are not like everybody else, we can learn from them and have fun together.

• If your enemy is hungry, feed him, he might become your friend.

In Science children, with the help of a model moon (half-light and half-dark), found out why it seems to change shape and which part of the moon is illuminated by the sun as it orbits the earth. Children discovered that there really is a dark side to the moon. To help secure the science, children went outside and modelled how the sun shines on the moon as it orbits the earth helping to explain why we have night and day. The children who modelled the orbit of the moon were much more exhausted and dizzier than those children demonstrating the sun or the earth!

During Quaker Week this week, Year 5 have been looking closely at Advices and Queries to see what we could learn about how Quakers try to live their lives. Reading through the advice the book gives, we found lots of quotes that we already knew as we see them up on the walls of the Junior School like “there is inspiration to be found all around us”. (Advices & Queries 7) We started thinking about what the advices and questions really meant and tried to put some of them into our own words to understand them better. We wanted to be able to share the ideas with the rest of the school so we put all the different quotes we liked on to strips of coloured card and joined each quote to another so that they all linked together. It took quite a while and we learned how to be patient but we are very pleased with our “Quaker chain” paper chain.

We hope it helps to explore the idea of “room for more” as we kept adding link

after link, each with a different piece of advice that we could explore or try out for ourselves. By the way, each child in year 5 made a chain with 112 links and each child’s complete chain measured about 7.5 meters long: that’s a grand total length of almost 100 meters made up of 1456 links!

Year 6 have been busy pulling weeds and clearing the soil ready for replanting their Dig for Victory garden in the Spring. A true Dig for Victory garden would, of course, have produced vegetables throughout the year, but the long summer holiday means that there are more weeds than cabbages, beans and potatoes by the time we returned to school in September. All is not lost though, as it does provide much sustenance to the local slug and snail population.

Even some of our more vegetable-phobic Year 6 children realised that eating your greens was a necessity during the Second World War as most other foods were rationed. The thought of many weeks without chocolate and sweets horrified the children, seemingly worrying more children than the prospect of being in the Blitz in London during 1940!

Dig for Victory was not the only slogan heard this week, as Year 6 also began learning about propaganda as they deciphered the meaning of a variety of British and American government posters from the war years. Did you know that of the 2 million or so “Keep Calm” posters, only a handful were ever displayed as they were seen as too patronising?

Year 6 looked at the campaign 'Fly Kites not Drones', and linked it to the Quaker Week theme this year - Room for More. They thought about 'Room for More' wishes for the world, for example More Love, More Patience, More Understanding. They attached their thoughts to the tails of kites, before flying them and sending their wishes into the sky, as they do in Afghanistan; where flying kites is seen as a message of hope and peace.

Head Teacher Awards:

• Hanne-Lydia • Rory • Emmeline The following children were presented with Celebration Certificates at our Celebration Meeting today: Y1/2 - Bertie S Y3 - Bertie M Y4KS - Thomas Y4MA - Tobin Y5 - Orlando Y6NH - Penelope Y6AP - Finnley In friendship Edward Rossiter Head of Junior School

Ps. Thinking of a material example of how we can show an understanding of the needs of others. Did you know that the 52 poorest countries in the world shoulder a debt burden of £286 billion? This is less than the net worth of the world’s 21 richest individuals.

Off to new heights!

It was fantastic to introduce some pupils in Y3 - 6 to the climbing wall during PE lessons this week. Pupils were provided with the opportunity to have a go at either bouldering or climbing with a rope and harness. There was a great deal of excitement amongst all children involved and the sessions will be rolled out to all groups in Y3-6 over the year.

Sports Fixtures

Tuesday 2nd October 2018 - Sibford School v New College Match Report by Oscar, Y6 2.50pm kick off, both teams have early shots but no goals. Fred and Henry make their way up the pitch and get a free kick to Sibford for handball, Fred decides to take the shot from the halfway line but unfortunately misses. New College has a goal kick, Fred got in the way and scores! 1-0 to Sibford! The ball gets taken up to the halfway line and New College get the game underway. Sibford make the push back and Finn gets the ball back, headers it to Fred and Fred scores! 2-0 to Sibford! New College then make their way up the pitch, they shoot but Oskar did an amazing block! New College take the corner and hit the crossbar. Halftime.

New College start and get closer and closer to the goal, they shoot but Bardia amazingly blocked it. New College intercept the ball again, Nicholas tried to run after the ball, but they score. 2-1 to Sibford! New College get in formation but Tom ran down the pitch and sneaked the ball in! 3-1 to Sibford! It’s a very good game.

New College take a free kick, Oskar dived to save but the ball just got in. 3-2 to Sibford! Toby goes on the pitch and replaces Tom. Finn shoots again and hots the crossbar. Not much time left, New College make their way up the pitch and just get the ball past Oskar. 3-3. New College steal the ball, run up and get it past Oskar again! It’s like New College completely changes, 2 goals in the last 5 minutes. Sibford try and get one more goal but it’s too late, the full time whistle blows. 3-4 to New College. Player of the match: Fred

Lost Property

Kaiya has lost one of her Sports socks which is named. Penelope has also lost her swimming costume, also named. Please can everyone check their bags in case these have been picked up in error.